YNMS: Money Monster

Chris here with more trailer happenings. One of the good things about Phase 2 of Oscar season is that we finally start seeing trailers for spring/summer films targeting adult eyeballs and reminding us that we start all over again with a new film year in March.

Here we have May's Money Monster, which finds Jodie Foster behind the director's chair again. It's her return to features following those well-received TV directorial turns with Orange is the New Black and House of Cards. She's brought the extra star power with Julia Roberts and George Clooney front and center against Unbroken's Jack O'Connell.

Take a look for Yes No Maybe So after the jump...

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'six links forward and five links back, I got -- I got an angry link'

Vulture Jeff Tetreault, the screenwriter of Bad Johnson, is a go-go boy by night. This is an amusing article
Defamer Lupita Nyong'o chosen to headline this year's People "50 Most Beautiful" issue. Yeah yeah. But can we hear about some new roles? Seriously? What is this insane wait. Why isn't she buried in offers?
Vanity Fair's Hollywood turns out that Naomi Watts Marily movie Blonde is back on... only now it will star Jessica Chastain. Basically every actress is rumored to or will play Marilyn Monroe at some point in her life
USA Today congratulations to Jodie Foster. The actress just married her girlfriend after a year of dating
Variety Cannes by the numbers with directors from 25 (Xavier Dolan) to 83 (Jean Luc-Godard) in two women in competition this year
THR oh jesus Christ. Hollywood can't leave any franchise alone. They're talking about reviving Flash Gordon now.

Playbill Opening night of the Hedwig revival on Broadway with Neil Patrick Harris
Towleroad Andy Towle was also there in the first row

NEIL PATRICK HARRIS SAT ON MY FACE LAST NIGHT AND I LOVED IT

Variety it's really happening. They're remaking Ben-Hur (1959) which won 11 Oscars. No film is safe! (That said, Ben-Hur was also a remake of a silent epic so...)
Mark Ruffalo is tweeting photos from the set of Avengers: The Age of Ultron
Coming Soon weird news: Meg Ryan will be the voice of future Greta Gerwig on How I Met Your Dad

Tonight's Watch
Screen Junkies gets really cheeky supercutting all the F words in The Wolf of Wall Street. But not those F words

Year in Review: The Bad, The Worse, and the Ugly

I used to make a big fuss over my CINEMATIC SHAME list but this year I'm mostly just feeling the love (see also that "most moving" list share). Nevertheless tradition is tradition, so herewith a few dubious "honors" and outright dismissals from the worst of 2013

WORST MAINSTREAM FILMS
One can avoid a lot of dross if you select your own movies rather than have them assigned to you by an editor. But true terror always finds a way. Let's call this a three way tie. Identity Thief is so stuffed with uncecessary scenes and filler -- the stars don't even meet for half an hour! -- it's practically built to be ignored on cable for decades to come while you putter around your house with your phone in hand and your mind entirely elsewhere -- at least until you notice some bright color combination on Melissa McCarthy and chuckle at a line reading or two before instanteously losing interest again.

Unfortunately there's more. The Counselor, Oblivion, Diana, The Lone Ranger, Jodie Foster and more dishonors after the jump... 

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Podcast: "Butler" History & "Elysium" Nonsense

On this week's podcast Joe, Nick, Nathaniel and Katey discuss Foxcatcher's release date, and Elysium's fast fade nonsense from unsanitary exoskeletons to Jodie Foster's unplaceable accent.

But the bulk of the conversation is devoted to Lee Daniels' The Butler which has us all confused. Is it a terrible movie with good moments or vice versa? Whatever it is it might well be an unmissable oddity given all the celebrities crammed into it from Mariah Carey to Vanessa Redgrave and the ability to see Forest Whitaker and Oprah Winfrey in matching track suits. 

We'll also tell you which celebrities weren't in the movie that should have been. You can listen to the podcast right here or download it on iTunes. 

The Butler & Elysium

Review: "Elysium"

This review was previously published in my column at Towleroad

Matt Damon has a gym membership but no health care in ElysiumIn the future everyone has trouble finding good healthcare, there is no middle class, and Los Angeles is a cesspool. So far, so believable. By the future you mean next week, right? Dystopian fantasies work best when they prey on current fears and exaggerate like a mofo. ELYSIUM knows just where we hurt, aiming squarely for our 'have-not' wounds. Though there is no direct talk of politics in Neill Blomkamp's action flick / sci-fi allegory, this 22nd century Earth is a place where the Right Wing have obviously long since won the political wars. The Koch Brothers and Friends, the "Corporations are People!" set, have vacated the filthy planet altogether to rule from afar and horde their wealth. They orbit the earth in mouthwatering luxury aboard the titular space station Elysium which spins like a pricey slo-mo hamster wheel (think 2001: A Space Odyssey. Add bling, swimming pools and golf courses), though it's undoubtedly the 99% who are powering it with their sweaty manual labor.

One such laborer is Max DaCosta (Matt Damon) who is foolishly hoping to 'work his way up' and buy a ticket to Elysium. He's an ex-con, though, and delusional about his future prospects. Even his childhood love Frey (Alice Braga), a stand-up citizen and steadily employed nurse can't afford to move there. In the future good health care is only available to the 1% despite technology so advanced that anything this side of death is instantaneously curable (think magic not medicine) and Max and Frey are out of luck. Socioeconomic mobility is as extinct as the weird animals that Max and Frey look at in picture books as children in flashbacks -- what the hell is a giraffe?

And also: why is Jodie Foster so pissed off???  

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